1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to techniques fox exchanging information with a storage terminal.
2. Related Art
Flash memories called USB (Universal Serial Bus) memories are commonly available. A USB memory can be connected to or disconnected from a host apparatus having a USB port. By connecting a USB memory to a USB port of a host apparatus, a user of the host apparatus can execute various types of processing, such as reading or deleting data stored in the USB memory or writing data to the USB memory. For example, according to techniques disclosed in JP-A-2005-266934, data can be read from a USB memory according to the Mass Storage Class, which is a standard for reading or writing data.
With the recent development of the Internet, attempts are being made to allow various devices to function as WWW (World Wide Web) clients or WWW servers. On the Internet, Internet communication protocols, such as the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), are used. These protocols can be used, for example, in an attempt to allow a USB memory to function as a WWW server. However, with such Internet communication protocols, many steps have to be taken to establish communications between the USB memory and a host apparatus. Thus, it takes certain time to exchange data. Usually, data is exchanged very rapidly between the USB memory and the host apparatus. Thus, such an increase in processing time is a serious problem for users.